Berg, a nice guy who oversaw gleaning and food recovery at the USDA under Clinton, recently published a fascinating book on hunger in the U.S. It’s required reading, and if you buy it here, half the price goes to the Coalition Against Hunger.

Back to the unfinished food fine, it’s one solution for the old ‘eyes are bigger than the stomach’ problem. Some would say that ‘all-you-can-eat ‘ is the real problem, as it encourages overeating to ‘get your money’s worth.’ At these buffets, food waste is often an unfortunate side order.

I’ve seen an uneaten food charge a few places in Asia, but this the first time I’d heard of it in the U.S. What do you make of the idea?

12 Comments

A good idea for all-you-can eat places. I’m constantly shocked at people who bring huge plates of food to the table, eat part of the plate, then go for another plate. I get two plates at the generic Chinese all-you-can-eat buffets. I know, deep down inside myself, that one plate is enough. Two usually makes me feel full, which I know is too much. I compensate for overeating by trying to drain all the sauce before transferring food to my plate, and my picking out all the vegetables for myself and leaving the meat on the buffet. I think I’m even correct in assuming that people who come after me will be much happier eating “beef and broccoli” that has had all the broccoli picked out already.

I thought of you last night. I went to a diner type restaurant, and was intrigued by a burrito sold as whole, 1/2, 1/4, and 1/8 size. The whole was $7.99 (USD). The waitress told me it was big, about 8 pounds. For $7.99 I didn’t believe her. They served me a burrito the size of a rugby ball. An eighth of said burrito very well might have been a pound of food. I thought of you because even after I ate everything that tasted good (there was decent amount of carna adovada hidden inside it that was fabulous) I still had most of the burrito left. I abandoned what was left to the trash heap because everything that remained just wasn’t something I wanted to eat.

there’s an AYCE sushi joint in chicago that’s been doing the same thing for at least the 5 years i’ve been going there. all food including rice must be eaten or they do charge you. not sure what the policy is if you order something you then discover you hate. only the price makes new york look like it’s for suckers: $17.95. i only got busted for rice one time.

I guess you’d learn after that first time…I can’t imagine they’d have many repeat customers getting fined. That’s an interesting question about things you don’t like. But I could see a ‘gag me with a spoon’ clause being abused as the default excuse for anything left over.

It’s too bad about buffets and taking food home. I can see why they don’t allow it, but it seems like the cause of a fair amount of waste.

So who decided how much is “too much” waste? I’d have a problem with that, if there wasn’t clear guidelines. I mean, what if the food is more filling that someone thought, or if it just didn’t taste good?